Thoughts on Gearscore

I don’t know what my gearscore is.

I don’t care what my gearscore is.

I don’t ask anyone what their gearscore is.

Gearscore doesn’t tell you what someone’s skill level is. It doesn’t tell you how much DPS they can actually do. It doesn’t tell you that they’re not a douchebag. It doesn’t tell you that they know how to gem, or spec, or enchant what gear they do have. It doesn’t tell you how much thought they’ve put into everything.

In other words, it doesn’t tell you a single. Damn. Thing-except how big your penis is and how many emblems you’ve farmed tormenting pugs in random heroics.

And your penis is not helping me out here.

I’d much rather take a look at someone’s gear and take a look at their enchants, gems, and general gear choices. If I see a DK with a SP gem, then I know I’m in trouble in a whole different way than “oh he only has a GS of 2″. There’s a difference between recently dinged and ignorant. I’d like to know what I’m really dealing with, you know?

I totally agree with this, and though I too hate our new retarded overlords…I am forced to pug many raids and thus either have to submit or not raid. It’s retarded. Met a paladin with 5k gs who’d only been playing the game for 16 days and had no idea about anything.

GearScore is a tool. The tool is especially useful for building PUGs for raids. It provides a way to — without being anywhere near someone — see what gear they are wearing (including enchants, though not gems for complex reasons related to the way the API for gem information works). Though this is not a perfect tool — because gear doesn’t scale with skill, and vice versa — it is a useful tool for determining more information about a person that you are considering pugging than “They are in the Looking For Raid Interface.”

More reliable is standing next to someone and looking at their gear, but that’s not always going to happen; when I’m sitting in ToC needing to fill a spot, and I have 3 Death Knights who I have never grouped with before in LFR, how do I pick between them? GearScore lets me look at their gear without needing to pull up the Armory, meaning I can continue to have an eye on whispers, etc. while I’m looking.

GearScore can certainly be abused. Treating gear as a single number is silly, and is primarily meant to act as an *indicator*, so you can have a vague idea of what you’re in for. Most people don’t use the tool how it’s meant to be used. ‘wow-heroes gearscore’ — because it requires you to be looking at the gear anyway — is not useful as anything other than an epeen measurement. But as far as GearScore being completely useless, I disagree: it is a complete boon to me, as typical “Find more PUGs” bitch in my raids.

6 months ago, I was regularly assembling VoA runs. Before I installed the GearScore addon, I would be managing LFG interface, whispers, etc. coming to me telling me various statistics about the people trying to get into a run — and they were often lying. There is no way that the Death Knight in ilevel 150 greens was pushing 4k DPS. Being able to look at a number and get a vauge estimate, and being able to pull up an interface to show me their actual gear, without them being anywhere nearby me, was a huge boon, and changed my VoAs from ‘never succeeding’ to ‘never failing’ within a few days of figuring out how to use it.

Additionally, the most recent versions of GearScore are adding gear score based on class — so the DK wearing a spell chest will get a lower score, because he’s wearing improperly itemized gear.

All in all, GearScore is just a tool. A widely abused tool, but so many are. Used correctly, GearScore can help make choices between unknown PUGs in a situation where you’re really just trying to fill that ‘one more spot’. As a PUG raid builder, it is an extremely valuable tool. Simplifying *your* gear to a single number is stupid epeen measurement, but using the information/tools available to you to help ensure the success of your raids helps create more success.

This is the sole reason you see hunters rolling need and USING Tank swords… ‘but i get a higher gearsore- it must be good for me!’. No… no its not. A Northrend Quest blue with Crit/Agil is lightyeras better than a fast sword with Parry/Block on it… trust me.

I’ve talked about this before on Twitter, but I only really use GearScore (specifically the one on WoW-Heroes) as a gauge for myself, to see if I’m geared well enough to do a certain raid, or what-not.

Only in pure curiousity’s sake do I ever check others, and even then, it’s not really a big deal for me.

@Derevka, I think the reason you see hunters rolling need and using tank swords is because “my pet’s stats scale with mine!” in the best cases, or “but better defense and stamina means I’ll live longer, right?” in less-good cases. GearScore is just another excuse for people to not know what they’re doing, not the origin of the dumbness. :)

I don’t know, it seems like the problem with Gearscore is really more a problem with the people who are using it. All it claims to do is give you a number representing how high the item level is on a person’s gear. If idiots in PUGs assume it measures skill in playing, or quality of choices in gearing, it seems like THEY should be the ones dying in a fire, not the addon itself.

On the other hand, it can be argued that the addon IS kind of worthless. It can be a fun, mostly joking “competition” between guildies…or a quick look to see you fall in terms of gear level among people you know gear up correctly. But beyond that…it doesn’t seem real useful.

I could not agree more. It’s bad enough that in my guild just because we use be.imba as a general yardstick some people think that means a score that meets our requirements means that they are omgawesome!…. and then aren’t hit capped and pull about 1k dps on AoE trash…. and then wonder why I don’t take them to raids. Gearscore is making it all worse.

HA! I seen DK’s dps with tanking gear on so they can get a higher gear score and get into an ICC 5 man instance otherwise the system will not let them.
Still fun to tell a guildie mine is bigger than yours…gear score that is. :)

I do find some small value in gearscore. Obviously it is not determinative of either skill of a groups ability to clear an instance.

What I find it valuable is when I am pug tanking rather than inspecting all the dps’ and healer’s gear I can get a quick number to have a guess what we are in for. Really low gearscores suggest I should be more careful in marking, pull slower and not assume everyone knows all the fights. Low gearscore on the healer means looking at his/her mana level more than normal. High gearscores means I going to try to pull the whole place at one time :)

@Ironstryke – I actually had a paladin chain pull every god damned thing in H PoS yesterday, and I flailed a bit on my ICC capable priest.

I’m not really set up to handle the AoE damage that some of those 5 mans dish out without mana nommage, so awesome!gear or not, I wish tanks would chill the fuck out. XD Or, you know, see my mana bar sitting at 25% and at least slow down!

While I laugh at gearscore competitions the way I do at dps competitions, or damage done competions, or really any in game competitions, you said it well that it really doesn’t tell you if they’re a douchebag or not or if they know jack or not. Gearscore the addon is not the problem. It’s a tool that a smart person can use when pugging. It’s not the end all/be all and I laugh harder at those who think it is.

The capacity of people to sink to new lows of stupidity is not enhanced by Gearscore’s existence. They’ve always had it, and making Gearscore their crutch or excuse doesn’t mean Gearscore is the problem, it’s still the people. Sadly. :/

I don’t hate GS or Recount. I hate dumb players that don’t understand wtf they are really there for, and don’t know what those numbers really mean or are useful for.

My gear score as Shadow is a bit higher than my Holy GS. Both are above 5K using the addon. I pulled a whopping 659 dps in ToC-10 the other night on the Twins. (First time ever DPSing that fight, and I had real problems targeting the right twin…even standing next to her and tabbing!)

So yeah…gear score is pretty useless. Now, if I could ever GET IN A PUG AS SHADOW…so I could practice… (I know; don’t check “Healing” :P).

Gear Score means nothing to me as a raid leader. I’ve had people ask me if their gear score was high enough to come. I just sort of laugh. My biggest concern is whether or not they’re gearing the right stats, and can they pull a lot out of their toon?

That said, the obsession over gear score within my own guild has made me take some pride in my own. My response to anyone who talks about it to me is still “Gear Score doesn’t mean anything” though, so I hope I haven’t gone too far off the deep end there. I’m always trying to make my toons the best they can be.

have to disagree with you. while a person’s gs is incredibly overrated, it’s hardly pointless. here are a few thing someone’s gs can tell you:

1) a low gear score: the person recently dinged 80 or hasn’t put much time into the toon. very important to know as fresh 80s and ppl who rarely play normally have 0 idea how to play their class. if they do know how to play, first of all they probably don’t and secondly they definitely haven’t had much experience playing in a raiding situation. personally i don’t want to run with someone like this: they won’t know how to use the encounter and their class mechanics and make the most of it.

2) an incredibly high gs: ok… couple things here. first, whatever addon you’re using that says people has a gs over 5k is wrong (at least on my server). check wowheroes.com. secondly, a person with a high gear score (i’m talking 3k+)is a person who has at the very least put a lot of time into his toon and has experienced all the encounters multiple times. does this mean he isn’t going to suck? that he isn’t going to stand in fire? that he isn’t going to completely suck ass and not know to switch dps when he’s supposed to? no… not at all. he might be horrible.

BUT HERE IS THE THING. the odds of someone with a 3k gs being an asset to your raid (no i’m not talking about party b/c all the 5 mans have been cleared by ppl in t6) versus someone with a 2k gs being an asset to your raid is probably something like… i dunno… 10:1?

general rule of thumb: if a person has a better gs he’s more likely to have more experience and therefore be a better player. if you don’t like this then go farm heroics and get full t9 and badge gear so you don’t have to worry about people checking your gear score. IF YOU AREN’T WILLING TO DO THAT THEN QUITE FRANKLY I DON’T WANT YOU IN MY RAID. GTFO.

@apokteino: You just identified one of the biggest problems with gear scores–there are several. I have an addon that shows my Holy Priest Gear Score at 5122; on WoW-Heroes, it’s something over 2K. I know there are other places that calculate scores differently. But if someone using the GS addon asks my score and I tell them “2448” I’m not going to get much respect. :p

And I take HUGE issue with your assertion that a newly-dinged 80 has no idea how to play his or her class. That may be true, but it may be 100 percent false, too, for a LOT of reasons. Just one example: Depends on how the person got to 80. By 100 percent solo questing? Probably not too knowledgeable about how to run in a 5-man. A hundred percent running 5-man pugs? Maybe. Running 5-mans, and 10- and 25-man raids? Probably as well as you do.

Finally, “an asset to your raid”–which raid? Naxx-10? Or ICC-25H? There’s a difference. Don’t overgeneralize; unfortunately, that’s what the people who rely on GS as a means to assess skill tend to do. Their –and your– loss.

Oh, I should mention that if I am EVER asked my gear score as a condition of being invited/accepted for a raid (assuming I’d ever pug a raid!), my reply will be, “Sorry; I thought this was a serious raid, not a bunch of n00bs” or something equally dismissive. Ditto for asking me to link my achievements.

When I get in a pug with my healer, I start off with, “I’m the best healer you’re liable to see today. Don’t do anything stupid and this will go well. Do stupid stuff and suffer the consequences.”

I have to agree mostly.. I recently ran a random heroic and got a holy pally as a healer with a very high gear score. I figured we’d be in for a nice easy run. Then I noticed he had 71 points in Holy. Then I noticed he apparently didn’t know what beacon of light was for and at least one person seemed to die on every pull.

On the other hand, GS isn’t totally useless because it at least gives you a general idea of the person’s potential. They very well not might live up to that potential as all these stories have proven, but it’s not a useless number.

@apokteino – “if you don’t like this then go farm heroics and get full t9 and badge gear so you don’t have to worry about people checking your gear score.” Except that people WON’T RUN HEROICS WITH MY ALT WITHOUT BEING DICKS OR BAILING BECAUSE THEY GET IN A FUCKING SNIT OVER HER GEAR NOT BEING EPICS YET BECUASE PEOPLE WONT RUN HEROICS WITH MY ALT BECAUSE OF HER GEAR BECAUSE PEOPLE WON’T-do you see where this is going? Her GS, or the fact that she is still in half blues, mean nothing becuase if you look at the shit IT MAKES SOME FUCKING SENSE. Whether or not you agree with my choice of stm/parry gems. That’s what I’m getting at-GS tells you less than taking a longer moment to look at their gear itself. Even when I’m filling a 25 man raid I ignore the GS they give me in whispers and look at their gear, because that tells what I actually want to know. And yes, GS rears its ugly head in heroics becuase people are just that stupid.

“a low gear score: the person recently dinged 80 or hasn’t put much time into the toon. very important to know as fresh 80s and ppl who rarely play normally have 0 idea how to play their class. if they do know how to play, first of all they probably don’t and secondly they definitely haven’t had much experience playing in a raiding situation. personally i don’t want to run with someone like this: they won’t know how to use the encounter and their class mechanics and make the most of it. ”

Fuck that attitude up the ass. Without lube. I dinged 80 with my prot warrior what, a week ago? But she’s been prot since 30. I tanked in BC, I tanked my way to 80, so you’d better fucking believe my blue geared ass with the crappy GS knows what the fuck I’m doing. But people with that attitude are the ones who keep bailing on me once they see I only have 32k health and not 45, or tell me I suck becuase that ret pally with the GS of over 9000 is pulling first and not giving me half a chance to do my god damned job. The odds of someone with a 3k GS knowing what the fuck they’re doing is the same as the odds of someone with a naked toon knowing what they’re doing because anyone can lol pug their way to full t9.

I’d rather evaluate someone based on their actual gear choices (a DK with block value? what) than some add on generated number.

Shameless self-promotion aside: The catch 22 that is gear score really bites for folks like us that have newly-dinged 80 alts that have the blues/crafted epics and knowledge/experience necessary for most heroics, yet get booted because we aren’t already in full welfare T9. Fortunately, I have enough guildies online and available that are happy to run with my alts.

I have the mod loaded and can see folk’s gear scores, but that is not the be-all-end-all as to determining whether or not someone is worth a poop when it comes to executing a dps rotation/priority properly and/or not standing in fire/toxic poop/void zones/etc.

Sadly, the gear score concept won’t be going away. Blizzard utilizes it to a degree when determining what random heroics folks can run (with HoR having higher requirements than other heroics). It’s good on paper, but when you get that DK gemming for spell power in his T9 in your group…

Tirael speaks wisdom. I admittedly will check people’s gear if things are going slow/badly in heroics but I won’t say ‘OMG NEWB GET OUT’ of anything for 5 mans. I used to do minus 1k dps, too, and it’s easy to forget that.

Heroic HoR being a possible exception. Still, gearscore has done more harm then help “OMG YOU NEED X GEARSCORE’. Seriously.

1) i’m not talking about 5 mans. i’m talking about raiding. if ppl are ditching your random lfgs b/c of your gs… that just makes me laugh. even when we were in t6 the dungeons could hardly be called hard! i healed some idiot prot warrior with 487 defense rating and 24.9k health once i buffed him with kings. i’m talking about raids…

2) a person who has logged 150+ hrs of lvl 80 raiding will play his toon better than he did when he dinged. is that the concept what you are fucking without lube? does that guarantee that he will play better than the person in the lfr who has half his gear score? no… but all other things being equal (spec/gear/glyphs) it would be retarded to take the person who you know doesn’t have the experience someone else does.

i never pug anything so i honestly don’t really care what criteria people use to determine who they want in their raid. i’m simply saying that the reason people use gear score is because it is the most simple way to cut down on the number of bads that are going to whisper you for invites. you may weed a few people out who are actually ok players but simply haven’t put any real raiding time into the toon and for whatever reason believe they are entitled to run togc with shitty gear… but honestly, those people can diaf. i wouldn’t want them in my raid.

i’ll admit to using gearscore. mostly as a tool to see how i can improve. i’ll look at another toon’s score, then inspect them to see what spec, gear, enchants, etc. they have, and if it’s something i should aim for. otherwise, i ignore it. after all, i’ve seen the asshattery of pugs and low gs.

There is only 1 situation I might possibly accept that some kind of gearscore mod might be vaguely useful and only to help assess a player not a be all and end all… and that is where there are actual DPS/HPS/TPS requirements to kill shit. And you are running a PuG where you have no idea of the quality of the players you are pulling from whatever channel you are spamming.

It’s the old DPS/healing meters argument. It’s a tool, not the be all and end all of decision making.

That said, I fucking hate GS and I wish it would DIAF because it makes PuG leaders lazy and you end up with a bunch of morons in your raid.

Anyone who offers me their GS, or asks me for it is an instant NO WAY GFTO OF MY RAID/GUILD.

Gearscore is like a car: if you look at the roads/accidents and annual fatalaties, it looks like cars are a disaster. And, in the wrong hands, they are.

Similar thing with GS. A large portion of the population have no business being “behind the wheel”.

GS is only an indicator.

Let’s be honest, most players are “average”, and CANNOT wring the last ounce of use out of their toon. (I know I can’t, even though I do my best) You can get 3k single target DPS out of that 2,000 GS (per the add-on) Retpal? Great! But you are the exception.

I don’t raid. I dont have the online connections. So I Pug a lot. What GS *does* provide is a “warning” that you might have to be extra careful, or keep an extra eye on a given person/toon. Or, if nothing else, it’s a bit of a ruler that you can compare yourself to others with (ie, I’m better geared, but that guy is STILL beating my damage/DPS)

For a PuG 5 man, I’m certainly not going to be tabbing out to see if they’re properly geared, gemmed and enchanted. GS gives a nice quick n dirty gauge. It’s a tool and a reference. No more, no less.

If you’re in a rading guild, I’m not sure why GS would ever be a topic of conversation: after all, you guys run together all the time, and performance speaks MUCH more loudly than a number, correct?

Yes a “really skilled” player can do wonders, even with a severely undergeared player, but most of us aren’t “really skilled”. We’re “average”. I know that pisses off a lot of the Vanilla crowd… *sorry*

Also, if folks are able to theorycraft the crap out of their gear, know all the soft & hard caps for the stats for theire class, and you’re not sure which GS to “use”? Come on… use the “in game” one, that also incidentally gives the highest numbers.

I dunno, I read a ton of stuff on both sides (though mostly bashing) GS yet I hardly see anything about it on my server. Tempest in a teacup, and all that? Or am I just lucky?

I admit I like WoW heroes it has a nicer interface than the armory to show gems etc.

ambrosine I think you are just in an asshole battlegroup, while i know that most of the people love it when I show up 45k+ unbuffed (discounting the random pug buff) i haven’t heard many horror stories from other tanks coming up the ranks who don’t have that kind of health. then again in my battle group (cant remember name off hand, feathermoon is the server i am on) tanks are in such short supply that our queue’s are instant almost anytime, and dps/healers won’t leave because they have at least a 20 min wait if they do (15 for the deserter debuff + ~5 min for a healer or 20+ for a dps) as far as apokteino’s comments: He lacks a certain grasp on how to play nice with others, he lacks the ability to express his opinion in a way that doesn’t paint him as an asshole. He does however make one valid point: if you don’t have the gear for x raid then I don’t care how good you are with your toon, especially a tank. (ex tank needs enough health to survive gormok hit+2 stacks of impale in 10 man, 3 stacks min for 25) You could be the best tank in the world, but if you can’t take that hit, you cant tank that raid.

Heroics are a different story, as I said earlier. Though all things considered, for the War, why not go dps on them for a little while and find a guild tank to run with? that way people wont complain and you still get fast queues?

Having nothing to do with this post, I’ve recently been surprised with the number of Blogs that are out there, and was instantly interested in having one of my own. Was wondering if there were maybe some tips to throw out there for a newbie blogger, how to get people to read it, how to set it up to look cool and whatnot, whatever. Thanks for your time.

I am so glad that the whole gearscore thing hasn’t caught on in my Battlegroup (Reckoning), at least Horde-side. I’ve always found it much more effective to eyeball someone’s gear than read the numbers. Gearscore doesn’t give you a proper idea of if they’re wearing the right gear, gemmed correctly, or enchanted correctly.

You seemed to have sparked quite a debate here. I’ll add my 2 cents to this and simply say I’d rather test my luck in a PUG with someone who has a high gearscore than someone with a low gearscore simply due to the law of averages. I think the majority would agree.

/High Fives Amber
Here here.
Generally speaking I avoid any run where the leader is basing anything off of gearscore as it generally shows they lack the understanding of other classes required to actually lead anything worth a shit anyway.
The tool has a use however the VAST majority of people have no idea how to use it and thus it just breeds more rampant retardation in the masses, and Ron gear also tends to bloat ego’s so a large number of the people who do have a clue are still raging assholes and thus not worth running with (not implying anything either by the way, you seem like the kind of sarcastic bastard* id enjoy running with actually)
Basically Gearscore can** be useful for a preliminary ok they are not trying to run ToCr 10 in quest greens thing, but after that is used the person requesting it needs to actually look at the person and use their grey matter a little.
*I’m Aussie so calling you a bastard is not a bad thing here.
**Still not a fan but it is something that can be used.

But tbh, when entering a pug, I do a quick inspect, let me show average iLvl and look at gems enchants. OK, not so much checking on enchants and gems in heroics, but only to gauge if it’s a totally overgeared group or whether to go slowly.

Usually, when healing, just looking at the tank’s health is enough of an indicator if it will be a slow or fast run, and I despise the overgeared tanks, because most of them run off to pull before I’ve put my ES and WS on, grrr.

I only use GearScore as a personal reference to how far I’ve come or what raids I would perform most easily in (re: gear — “Will I get smashed in the face, or will my gear stand up to it while I learn the strat?”).

But in heroics? If you didn’t Armory your pug members six+ months ago, then why would you look at their GearScore now? If they’re not performing up to par, then Vote to Kick and replace them. Simple as that.

GearScore means shit until you’re level 80 because of heirlooms, etc., and people do just fine in randoms (yes, even level 70 heroics — they still exist). Overall, it’s adding unnecessary stress to the community and I wish it had never been developed.

:D Thank you
Thou…. I was just looking at my DK, and apparently I either fail at Reading or fail out mouse usage, as it appears that the green gem I bought on the AH with +hit for my shiny new chestpiece has… 4mp5.

And theoretically, on rare occasions, we also have an @Orithea! On less rare and more wordy occasions, we also have a James. Who does not have a Twitter because he is fail? Anyway, there had to be some bubbles in this blog somewhere.